The Best Love Stories
by ambitiousbutrubbish
Summary: Tauriel shines like the stars her people love, and Kíli would let the heat of them consume him, if only to sit with her like this for the rest of his days. - Kíli/Tauriel, sequel to Like The Starts Above, The Jewels Below


Kíli stands on the shore of men between his kin and Tauriel and he has eyes only for her.

Erebor has been in his stories since he sat atop his uncle's knee and was told the tale of the ancestral home of his people - the crown and the throne and the jewels that belonged to his family by birthright, cruelly stollen by the beast Smaug, who murdered their people and cast a dread and a shadow over their halls and their lands until no trees would grow and no birds flew. The image of the Lonely Mountain jutting up proud and imposing from the flats around it has been burned into his brain through countless longing retellings, though he had never looked upon it himself until only a small number of weeks ago. He pledged his life to the quest to reclaim that home, against the advisement of those he loved and those who loved him. His actions made his brother pledge his life, too, and for that his heart ached from fear all the more.

But now he has seen the lofty, snowcapped peaks of the Lonely Mountain, he has seen the dragon Smaug and he has seem the great drake struck down, fire and life fleeing his monstrous body simultaneously, and finally crashing into the lake to give the dwarves back their homeland, and the line of Durin its birthright. And all those wonders do not compare to the beauty of the she-elf who stands before him on the beach, feet leaving no impression in the sand.

She might as well be standing on the other side of the shore, for all she is untouchable by him. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen; tall and slender, but not fragile. He has seen her lift impossible weights and move at impossible speed with dagger and bow. Her hair flutters in the wind and the sunlight as if it were aflame, and there is a fierceness in her eyes, a wildness that elves are mocked as being above. Dwarves aren't much for romance. They love once, and they love completely - almost to distraction - and entanglements of the amorous kind are not often actively sort after, but Kíli knows what he should be looking for regardless. And it is not slim she-elves that move with all the grace of water, and with all the relentlessness.

But battle skills are prized, and so is strength and loyalty and fearlessness and Tauriel has all those and more and for a moment, just a moment, Kíli allows himself to forget about the quest for Erebor and imagine leaving with her wherever she would choose to go next.

Likely she will return to Mirkwood and he would be imprisoned again. Perhaps Thranduil would be kinder to him when not accompanying Thorin, but rather the Captain of his guard. Perhaps he would allow him freer passage through his underground halls. Kíli would dearly love to see the tunnels that elves could build, though he would have little to compare them too, having not seen the caverns of Erebor nor the mines of any of the great dwarf kingdoms; just the smaller caves of the Blue Mountains that had fallen into disrepair after thousands of years. Maybe she would choose to wander Middle Earth, having finally left the boarders of Mirkwood and the influence of her king. She has seen so little of the world, and Kíli has seen so much in comparison. He would show her all he knows, the underground passages and the mountain paths and the trails through woodland and fields. He would take her to her kin in Rivendell - so alike her and her people in look, but so unalike in temperament - and to the merry, friendly hobbits of the Shire. He would take her to see a Fire Moon, to watch it rise between the mountains like a second sun. He can imagine its colour reflected in her bright green eyes, dying them as red as her hair, like a Valar of beauty and vengeance and death. He can imagine kissing her, then. Taking her hand, running his fingers through her hair almost as long as he is tall, and never letting her go, no matter where she would want to go next.

Dwarves are made for tunnels and mines and mountains, but for a moment, Kíli would give it all up to travel with Tauriel amongst the stars.

But only for a moment, for when he calls to her and she turns, he knows that he can not leave his family, and she will not leave hers. He tells her that he loves her regardless, though she professes not to understand, and he asks her to accompany him to Erebor. He does not know what he expected from the question, because her place is among the trees and the sun and the stars, not in tunnels under the mountain, and he would never seek to take her from them. And Thorin would never allow it. His uncle has been as good as Kíli's father since he was but a babe, and his King for almost as long. He owes Thorin his life and his obedience, but he would damn him and his consequences if Tauriel would come with him to the Lonely Mountain.

Perhaps he is reckless, like his mother always feared. But perhaps she is reckless, too.

She almost goes with him, he knows she does, he can see it in her eyes and the tremble of her lip but the elf Prince Legolas arrives and her resolve strengthens. She has her duty, and he has his.

He leaves her there on the shore, with his runestone in her hand and a promise to return to her on his lips. He can still feel where his hand had wrapped around hers, pressing that promise into her skin. He turns on his boat and sees her watching him, hand clutching the stone still outstretched as he left it, beautiful and ethereal and deadly.

But he must turn away again, else he will never complete his quest. Like his brother, he looks ahead towards the mountain. Towards home.

Kíli wishes that he had kissed her.

-00000-

The caverns and halls of Erebor are vast and beautiful and awe-inspiring, and every tale Kíli heard as a child did not do them justice. Words alone could not capture the majesty of the great dwarf kingdom, seat of the line of Durin, and the songs of dwarves are meant for traveling and working. But upon arrival Kíli is sent along with his brother and the rest of the Company to search for the Arkenstone among the piles of gold and precious stones, and he has little time to appreciate the great expanse of it.

Truthfully, he has not had time for much else but the fruitless search since the arrived on the mountain. Kíli never met his grandfather or his great grandfather, but it was said that Thrór went mad in these mines, and Thràin disappeared long ago, rumours occasionally reaching their household of him, too, lost to a sickness of the mind. And Thorin's mutterings grow darker and more poisonous, ravings echoing off the walls of the vast halls.

They are all nervous within these walls, but they dare not say so, lest Thorin overhear and give them even more reason to be. The very air feels ripe to snap with the tension, though it keeps the Company laser-focused on the gold and jewels. What each member intends to do with the Arkenstone should they find it, however - give it to the king or hide it where it can not feed his illness - is known only to him. Most can't risk discussing it. There is paranoia in Erebor, and suspicion, and likely not a natural one.

Fíli and Kíli are different, however. They were the only dwarves of close age growing up, and learned to confide everything in each other through sheer necessity. They know each other's every secret thought, and though Kíli has not told his brother fully of the time he spent with Tauriel or the way he feels about her, Fíli had taken him aside and warned him not to mention her or the elves in this place. It is dangerous. And for once, Kíli listens to the brother he finds overly cautious. Perhaps the dragon sickness is affecting him as well.

They decide together that they will give the Arkenstone to their uncle should they find it, but that they will not actively search for it. Instead, Fíli combs through the mountains of treasure for the blue sapphires their mother prefers. Kíli joins him, albeit halfheartedly. He finds himself instead stopping when he picks up rubies and emeralds, staring into their depths as if looking for something. He isn't sure for what, but it makes his heart ache for something that he knows dwarves can never give him. He catches Fíli watching him at it sometimes, wearing a look as curious as it is sad.

Kíli loves his family. He would do anything for them, even give his life if required. But he has never been much of a dwarf. Beardless, fair featured by the standards of his race and likewise too tall. He has never cared for the mountains and tunnels in the way that he knows that he should. He and Fíli grew up in the open air, traveling through human settlements with their mother to practice their craft. He has talked and fought with their men and flirted with their women, and found both sexes generally more receptive of him than his own kind. He likes the safety of dwarf halls, the warmth and familiarity of being underground and the sight of jewels glittering in the deep with the light of the forge. But just as much, he likes the expanse of the plains, the sharp, freshness of air from high in the mountains and the freedom to go as far and wide as the land can take him. Fíli feels the call of the mountain; he would dig Erebor deeper until the day he died. Fíli has ever been the heir to the line of Durin, the true dwarf.

Kíli set out on this quest not so he could bury himself in underground kingdoms as his race has done since their Birth, but to return his family and his people to their home. The Lonely Mountain has never been his priority.

Tauriel's eyes shine as bright as emeralds. The hair that falls down her back in twists and braids is red. Likely there is no great mystery to the precious stones he finds in his hands.

-00000-

She is wrath, and she is rage; a hate for the orc so powerful that her hands literally shake with it, a hate that is unbecoming of her race. Elves fight, of course. Elves have gone to war since creation and the First Age. But they do it for love, or for duty. Not for revenge. Not like her. From the moment the Greenwood Guard bought word of her parent's death at the hands of orcs, Tauriel vowed that she would get justice in a world that had wronged her. She fed the anger inside of her with the passion that elves usually reserve for music and healing and art, threw all to the wayside but her knives and her bow. The rise from a Silvan orphan to Captain of the Guard by just 600 years of age captured the attention of Prince Legolas and he made it his mission to befriend her. Together they pushed further and further on patrols, in pursuit of evil. Of vengeance. But eventually they reached the boarders of their land, and the boundary King Thranduil was unwilling to cross. She jumped that boarder of her own free will when she saw the chance to pursue those orcs to their source.

And Legolas followed her. Legolas, who now sits in silence beside her watching the gate of Gundabad. The elves of Rivendell are the quintessential of their race. Her people have lived in the Greenwood for centuries (though it has not been anything but Mirkwood for a very long time), and have grown more wild with the twists and magic of the forest. Even so, Legolas can sit still for hours, spreading his awareness amongst everything that lives and grows. Tauriel does not see anything doing either of those things in this wasteland - salted and burned by the presence of orcs - but Legolas is more than twice her age, and likely he can sense what she can not, with all her lack of practice with anything that is not a weapon. She itches with the need to do something, to charge through the gates before her and damn the consequences.

It is only the presence of Legolas that prevents her from doing so, for she would not wish him any more trouble that he has already bought on himself. With the death of her parents, Tauriel closed off her heart and her mind to any suggestion of romance or courtship, but despite that, she is not blind. She knows why Legolas accompanies her now, why he defied his father and his Lord to track orc, and it is not just because of his mother or the stories of old. She hates that she hurts Legolas because she can not love him back, though he never gives hint to any resentment of the fact, nor bitterness.

She built a guard around her heart and Legolas is pressed tight to it, moulded around her protections, but he can not breach them.

Perhaps it because that Kíli is so small that she did not notice him slip easily past those same walls. Tauriel supposes that she could have loved Legolas had she not held love from her life since her parents were murdered; until the day that Kíli's trusting eyes had looked up at her from through a cage. There is an innocence to him. A purity. She saw it in his great promise; not to gold or to jewels, but to his mother, to return to his family. And then later, to return to her. She saw it in his eyes, as he looked at her in wonder as she saved him from the spider and the orc and later, the awe mingled with disbelief, as she healed him in the home of the Dragonslayer. She saw it in the way he trembled when he reached out to touch her, the way he smiled with everything he had. The way they had talked together, of the world that he had seen and the one that she knew; the way he had spoken of her. She saw it in the openness of his face. Kíli reminds her of what she never had, and she would protect and treasure him at any cost.

The earnestness of his pledge to her had not needed to pass her defenses. He was already inside her heart. Perhaps that is the reason that she can not love Legolas. Her heart was made for another, as unfitting for her and she is for her race. But that makes it no less true, and she would not change it. She would have gone with him to Erebor regardless of what anyone else would say were it truly an option.

But there is a world to save.

-00000-

Thranduil is not a coward, no matter what others would say of him. He is not afraid to go to war, and he is not afraid of death. But he does not want to fight. He has a duty to his people to not allow them to perish, jewels or no. When it had been but the thirteen dwarves in Erebor he would have killed them without a single thought or regret, crush them against the walls and gold that greed made them withhold. But with orcs baring down on all sides there is nothing worth the death of his people. Not gems or gold, not even the stones made of starlight itself. Elves were created for immortality.

He knows that Tauriel knows this, even as she stands before him in defiance. But she is young and stubborn and reckless and she thinks herself to be in love, and she does not want to listen to him. He knows he has to stop her, for if she fights, she will just be another elf that will never return home.

She is strong - a warrior even - for he would not make just anyone Captain of his Guard, no matter how he favoured them (favours them). And driven, in a way he has not seen the elves of this age. But natural skill is no match for experience, and she has had little practice in killing beyond the foul spiders and magics that have invaded their boarders. She is still so young to come against creatures that are bred for war, and he would shield her from all horrors, if he could. He would not have her pass, not after he has been with her as much as his own child these past 400 years.

And even if she does not die, the dwarf will; today or tomorrow or a hundred years hence, it makes no difference. Elves do not age, and dwarves may live longer than men, but they too are prone to the icy grip of mortality. The dwarf will only die, and she will be left to mourn, and fade, as so many of his people will when they return home from this battle. It will tear her apart, and he would protect her from that.

Thranduil knows that Tauriel talked much with the dwarf in the weeks that him and his company were locked in their dungeon and maybe he should not have allowed it, but she was always somewhat of an outcast among other elves, and he tells himself that it was good to see her coldness melt into smiles during their encounters. She has suffered so much already, it would not do to forbid her from making a connection with another. However, he knows that for selfish reasons, he was also glad that when she was talking to him, it meant that she did not spend that time with Legolas. Thanduil knows how his son feels for the Captain, but he is also aware that it is not requited, and he would not see Legolas hurt.

Thranduil knows what it is to love and to not have someone capable of returning it. His son is not old enough or strong enough to survive that, yet.

He should have stopped Tauriel and the dwarf talking, but he can not see how what she feels for him can be any more than puppy love. They only spoke for a few weeks, after all.

He has to stop her in any way that he can. He will return his people home.

She should not feel the attachment to that dwarf so strongly.

-00000-

Even lying dead at his feet, Kíli's first thought upon seeing Fíli's face is that his big brother is here to save him. Fíli told him once that when Kíli was born their mother took him aside and told him to watch out for his brother, and he has taken that duty as seriously as the one owed to being heir to the throne of Durin. Whenever he would get into fights, or into danger, Fíli would run in afterwards to end it. Fíli is the thought to his action, the rationality to his recklessness. When he fell ill on the quest, Fíli stayed behind with him, despite him being raised for Erebor since birth.

When they left the Blue Mountains, Kíli was given a runestone as a promise to his mother to return. Fíli needed no stone. His most precious possession, his promise, was his little brother.

And Kíli could not help him when he needed it.

Thorin had told him to keep hidden, but Kíli's body reacts without any input from rationality. It is not until he hears Tauriel's startled, pained cry that he feels the fog being lifted from his brain.

Tauriel is here. She has come back to him. Here, at what seems like the end of his world: even here there is light.

He will not let anyone else he loves die this day.

-00000-

Death itself can not steal the innocence from him, and he looks at her as if he expects her to save him again, even as the orcish weapon pierces his chest.

Tauriel has not cried since she was a child, but she cries now, and freely. She cries for Kíli and Fíli. She cries for her parents. She cries for her king and for Legolas, for having to live an immortal life with the loss of a wife and a mother. She cries for everything she and Kíli could have had, were fate not so cruel, and the distance between their races so filled with past hate and past hurt. She cries because of promises that can never be fulfilled; because she loves him, and she never even got to kiss him. She should have, on that lake shore, but she had been afraid of his feelings, and hers, and she had thought they would have time. They had just ended a war before it had begun. She would see to a threat with Legolas, and when she returned the dwarves would have made their home in Erebor so she could meet him again. It was not supposed to be like this.

Kíli cries, too, and perhaps it is for the same reasons she does, though perhaps it is just from the pain, and when he dies, she feels as if her heart dies with him, as if she is already beginning to fade.

It is only for a second, the tears and the pain - she can not afford more right now - but it is a second too long and it gives Bolg the time he needs to advance upon her. She is weaponless and on the ground, and though she pushes aside everything but the fight, the burning flame of revenge that threatens to light her on fire from within, she is at every disadvantage.

She can not get to her feet in time. But there is a ledge behind her, and she can take him over the edge with her.

-00000-

Tauriel stays for the burial. Fíli and Kíli are laid to rest on either side of Thorin Oakenshield, their tombs carved into the rock of Erebor itself. The King Under the Mountain speaks, though she does not understand his words. The Common Westron was not made for these somber halls, not in this place, deep under the mountain. She heard someone call the new king Dain Ironfoot, Thorin's cousin. He weeps without shame as he speaks, and she can not help but marvel at the passion and openness of dwarves, for she could not bring herself to cry here even if she wanted to.

Dwarves feel so much, and so clearly. It makes her blush even know, how Kíli had looked at her, so innocent and tender and longingly. He will never do so again, and the blush fades as soon as it had appeared, to leave a face pale and drawn.

But Tauriel is finished with crying.

She leaves flowers at Kíli's tomb, and no one stops her. She does not know which of the Company of Thorin to thank for that, nor does she know whether they allowed it because they had come to accept her and her race, or simply because they were aware of the way Kíli felt for her, even if they didn't approve. Regardless, she is thankful for the small kindness of keeping her grief undisturbed, this brief moment of indulgence in her pain.

They are the only flowers that are in the halls of Erebor, the only green and red that is not stone, but they will live for as long as she does. Because Tauriel leaves a part of her heart deep beneath the Lonely Mountain in those dwarven crypts, never to see the light of the moon again, never again to walk in starlight.

She will never go to the Undying Lands willingly. She will fade, like all of her kin that remain in Middle Earth for too long. Or she will die in battle; defending her homeland, or in the war that must come, now that orcs are on the move again. It makes no difference. She will take her chances with what happens next.

She will find her way back to him, somehow. This will not be their end.

-00000-

Thranduil had lifted her banishment the moment he saw her leaning over Kíli's corpse, and Tauriel knows she must return to the elves. She must protect what she loves. It can all be taken from her so easily. She had forgotten that.

Her lord has given her a job, and she will complete it to the best of her ability. There are still orcs out there, still the beasts that have taken everything from her, and she will get better, get stronger, and she will kill them all. She builds back high the walls around her heart, and wider, too, now that Legolas is no longer pushing them back. She sleeps alone, she hunts and trains alone. She eats in the halls with her kin, seated at the right hand of her lord, but only because it is expected of her.

She will not fail again.

She has her duty.

She must do her duty.

She must –

Elves can die of a broken heart.

-00000-

_Kíli does not know where the children of Bard have gone to. Óin and Bofur left to find more athelas, for though his wound no longer pains him he is still weak from it. Fíli disappeared too, claiming a thirst for mead, though Kíli knows that, dutiful as he is, Fíli would not risk his sobriety when Erebor is so close to being taken and his little brother lies near-unable to defend himself. So he must have left for some different reason. _

_Whatever it was Kíli is grateful, for it leaves him alone with Tauriel. They spoke often in the weeks he was imprisoned in the halls of the Wood-elves, but not like this. Not seated together and facing out to the moonlight over the lake, the twinkling of the stars reflected in the water and in Tauriel's eyes. When she turns her head, as she tries to look at everything, her hair brushes up against his arm, and the third time it happens Kíli reaches up and catches a lock of it in his fingers. She startles, slightly, though does not object._

_Emboldened by her approval, Kíli gathers up more of those fiery red locks and starts to separate them between his fingers. He can not help but feel they are inadequate when compared to her beauty; short and thick where she is tall and slender, but like all dwarf hands they were made for creation and delicacy, and with Tauriel's hair between his fingers, Kíli is going to put them to the best work that he has never done. Nothing else would be fitting._

_Braids do not seem so important to elves. While in the Mirkwood dungeons Kíli had time to watch the elves passing by, and any would reach out to a passing kin to readjust their hair if it had fallen in their face. But it is not so with dwarves. Each braid means something, each twist a statement for other dwarves to read. The one he is braiding into Tauriel's hair is no different. It speaks of longing and joy and love, and as he ties the last knot to bind the braid in place, Tauriel turns to smile her thanks and stutters over her words. Kíli does not know what she sees on his face then, but he has no desire to hide what he feels from his features, and she blushes, high on her cheeks and the tips of her ears. _

_Kíli tucks the braid underneath the rest of her hair where it can not be seen by one who isn't looking for it. He would leave his hand buried in that silken fire, but in a moment of impulsive recklessness he had tied off her braid with a variation on a handfast knot, and he has been far too presumptuous this night already._

_They stay up together long into the night overlooking the lake and the stars reflected within, the Lonely Mountain a dark space on a dark horizon. They talk of home, of family, of beauty and music and magic. Sometimes Tauriel slips into Sindarin when the common tongue does not have the words to express her thoughts, nor the lilt and music to do them justice, and Kíli finds it easier sometimes to speak in Khuzdul when he speaks from the heart._

_The night is dark and the world gets colder every day as rumours circle about orc packs and the howls of wargs echo in the Misty Mountains behind, but Tauriel shines like the stars her people love, and Kíli would let the heat of them consume him, if only to sit with her like this for the rest of his days._

_They do not always speak each other's language, but they understand one another all the same._

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** First of all, I don't believe in canon fix-it stories. I'm all for Everybody Lives, but it has to be an AU, and not just in the incidental way that all Everybody Lives are AU. So this was always going to be a tragedy. And secondly, props to Peter Jackson for making it even more tragic than it was always going to be, because I thought for sure that Tauriel was going to die too. Oh well, can't miss that last chance to tug on the heartstrings.

We'll always have AUs. And missing scenes.


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